Yeah, me too. My best ever month from 2012 to 2017 was $389. My average for 2018 is $595, and I've made $909 already this month... with a week to go! 

Ah ok. Still... it was very kind of these Google Bots to purchase so many of my items.

Stock media has been dying from the day that stock media came into existence. Well, it has and it hasn't. The need for stock has been increasing gradually over the years. More channels, more shows, bigger audiences, more Youtube videos etc etc. So stock media is very much alive and well.

It's just the same old story of more and more competition when it comes to the people that sell stock media. There's no way to keep up with the increase in competition, so everyone gets a slightly smaller slice of the pie year over year. It's the same for everyone.... tv channels, slightly more viewers over the years, but more channels and more shows. Youtube channels... slightly more Youtube viewers over the years, but loads more channels and videos. There's not much that can be done about that.

Make more content than you did last year, make better content than you did last year, make sure you're on the sites you should be and not on the sites you shouldn't, revisit your descriptions, keywords, titles, think about branding, streamlining your working practices to make everything more efficient, consider cost-effective marketing, look for ways to maximise profits and minimise costs, add value, see what your competition are doing, review prices on sites where you can set your own, both from a time standpoint and a financial one, look for additional ways your work could be bringing in money, etc etc etc.

And if you've done all that and you still eventually get to the point where it's no longer worth while... then at least you'll know you did everything you could. You can then tip your hat to the world of stock media, say "Well, it was fun while it lasted kid. So long", and then turn your back before walking off into the mist. Or do what I'll do... say "See ya around suckers!" and fly off in my spaceship clutching a cheap bottle of wine in each paw.     

I don't think I've had a sale yet at DP in over two years. At SS I get about $200 a month.

No.

Did I see that they get 55% of the sale.
We got 45%
Is this correct?

The commission structure is quite complicated. There's a fixed buyers fee for video clips which is $3, which goes to Envato. There's then the normal author/agency split (they call the author fee), which is fixed if you're non-exclusive, and variable (based on how much you've sold) if you're exclusive.

The numbers you mentioned (55% author's fee) is for non-exclusive authors. So if you set the price of your video at $4... it's $3 for the buyers's fee, and $0.55 for the author fee, leaving you $0.45 or 11.25% of the total price. On the other hand, if you set your video to $100 then it's still $3 for the buyers's fee, and $53.35 for the author fee, leaving you $43.65 or 43.65% of the total price.

For exclusive authors, the author's fee goes as low as 12.5% if you've sold over $75K of content, so using the same example... a $4 video would give you $0.87 or 21.87% and a $100 video would give you $84.87 or 84.87%.

I can only assume the buyers fee/authors fee split is to put people off from pricing their items too low, and to reduce the exposure to Envato if everyone were to suddenly halve their prices overnight.   

Ok, thanks for letting us know.

Quote from: SpaceStockFootage on June 03, 2018, 20:16

So we've got one person saying they use controlled revenue because their sales are gradually decreasing, we've got one person saying they use controlled revenue because their sales are gradually increasing, we've got one person saying they use controlled revenue because their sales are wildly inconsistent, and in the majority of previous posts on the subject... we have people saying that they use controlled revenue because their sales are extremely consistent.

Very compelling evidence.

I think the only evidence is that the more you upload the less you earn in ss and this has been happening since 2017. Almost every old contributor is experiencing this. This is fact.

So are you saying that if you stop uploading or start deleting clips... your sales will increase or stay the same? I'm assuming you're just saying that even by uploading new content you're still earning less? What's your annual percentage increase on content compared with SS as a whole though? Unless yours is higher, then it would make sense that sales would be decreasing. That's not controlling revenue, that's just an inevitable drop in sales due to increased competition.

For After Effects templates, yes... they're probably the number one site for selling AE stuff. Upload your best one, see how you get on, then you can decide if you want to upload the rest.

Asus laptop, i7 Quad Core 6700HQ, 32GB RAM, GTX 1070 8GB.

GPU detection log:

Looking for NVIDIA CUDA-capable devices...
CUDA driver version: 9020
NVIDIA CUDA initialized successfully.
Checking CUDA GPU #1:
GPU device name is: GeForce GTX 1070
6782 MB available during initialization (8192 MB total)
Check passed - will attempt to use the device

Looking for AMD OpenCL-capable devices...
Failed to initialize OpenCL.
If you use an AMD card, please install the latest AMD driver with OpenCL support.

Neat Video benchmark:

Frame Size:     1920x1080 progressive
Bitdepth:       8 bits per channel
Mix with Original:      Disabled
Temporal Filter:        Enabled
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    Frequencies High, Mid, Low
    Artifact Removal:   Enabled
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Detecting the best combination of performance settings:
running the test data set on up to 8 CPU cores and on up to 1 GPU
GeForce GTX 1070: 6782 MB currently available (8192 MB total), using up to 100%

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CPU (8 cores) and GPU (GeForce GTX 1070): 15.2 frames/sec

Best combination: CPU (4 cores) and GPU (GeForce GTX 1070)

He's Sean Locke... the photographer.

Lol. I remember a few years ago doing the math and thinking if I had x number of files online I'd be making $XXX,XXX per year. I could retire in my 50's and make more and more money every year and eventually be raking in millions annually in my 70's with the little illustrations I did at home.

We all found out the hard way that it doesn't work that way.

Yeah, I've been doing it long enough to know that as well... that's why I put in the "all things being equal" clause. Although to be fair, the discrepancy between X and Y is usually down to time. If I had double the amount of clips tomorrow (of the same quality and variety - rather than duplicates), then I probably would make in the region of double the amount of money this month.

But nobody doubles their portfolio overnight unless it's their first month selling stock. By the time they do go from 5000 to 10,000 clips... or 1000 to 2000... the market is usually considerably different by then. Lower commissions, more contributors, more files, more competition, your original clips are less appealing etc etc.